Arian

Arian, Lowe & Travis takes a politically incorrect approach in new ads for Midway’s new Cruis’n Exotica driving game. The followup to the Chicago game maker’s Cruis’n USA and Cruis’n World arcade amusements, Cruis’n Exotica has players motoring through rain forest, oceans and outer space. The Chicago agency’s print ads paint yellow highway stripes through these locales, with copy headlined, “You never know where you’ll end up.” “The rain forest,” states one ad with a photograph of just that. “It’s so beautiful. So pristine. And it’s in the way . . . Race fans are going to be psyched. And Greenpeace is going to freak out.” An image of frozen tundra is accompanied by copy reading, “Environmentalists have got it all wrong. Pollution doesn’t harm nature. Road rage does.” “My personal favorite part is that, when you go through the Sahara and hit a camel, camel chunks go flying everywhere,” ALT creative director Kevin Lynch enthused about the game in a letter pitching his agency’s campaign. The ads are breaking in trade magazines aimed at arcade equipment distributors. –Trevor Jense